Young Vic Announces New Season Of Work For 2021

Young Vic Artistic Director Kwame Kwei-Armah announces a new season of work, welcoming theatre-makers and audiences back through the doors to create and experience live performance for the first time since the Young Vic's 50th Birthday celebrations in October 2020.

The season opens with Changing Destiny, Booker Prize-winner Ben Okri's stunning new adaptation of the 4,000-year-old Egyptian poem of Sinuhe the Warrior King, directed by Artistic Director Kwame Kwei-Armah and designed by award-winning architect Sir David Adjaye

The complete creative team announced for the highly-anticipated Hamlet, with Cush Jumbo in the title role, directed by her long-time collaborator Greg Hersov.

Best of Enemies, a new play by Olivier Award-winner James Graham, follows the debates that changed politics and television forever, directed by Jeremy Herrin in a co-production with Headlong.

Klippies, the acclaimed debut by Jessica Siân, a coming-of-age drama set in the twentieth year of South Africa's democracy about the intensity of first love, directed by Genesis Future Directors Award recipient Diyan Zora.

A unique collaboration between human and computer minds, AI is a play developed by Chinonyerem Odimba and Nina Segal, written alongside GPT-3 OpenAI technology. Using this advanced deep-learning artificial intelligence system to generate human-like script and dialogue, Genesis Fellow and Associate Director Jennifer Tang and Company will create a new play for the stage. In this unique hybrid of research and performance, the script will be brought to life over a series of evenings by the writers, actors and company, alongside insights into how the artists collaborated with the AI.

Best Seat in Your House, an innovative multi-camera immersive broadcast experience inviting audiences to play with the broadcast form. Viewers choose between taking The Director's Chair - with the possibility to cut live to any camera in the theatre at any time throughout a show ­- or relax and enjoy the live edit of a show with The Director's Cut.

Young Vic Taking Part present the third YV Unpacked tour, taking a professional production to venues such as elderly care homes, homeless shelters and rehabilitation centres. Love Reign, an eclectic piece of new writing about friendship, is Written by Shereen Jasmin Phillips and Directed by Stef O'Driscoll.

Taking Part also bring the world of theatre and ballroom together in an explosive evening of music, dance, walking and partying with Sundown Kiki, a bold celebration of Queer South London in all its glory, with Creative Direction by Jay Jay Revlon, Directed by Tristan Fynn-Aiduenu.

Kwame Kwei-Armah also recently told The Guardian that the theater plans to livestream all future productions.

"I do want to emphasise it is not in any way a replacement for live theatre, not in any way something I think will compete with the live experience," he said. "It is about access. That family in Scunthorpe who may want to see James Graham's play and can't get down for the day. That family in Cincinnati who can't get over. Access is our driver and this is a way that we make that access just a little more here and now. We won't stop with that, we'll keep on innovating."

Tickets go on sale to Friends of the Young Vic on Thursday 20 May, 12noon. Public booking opens Thursday 27 May, 12noon. Young Vic £5 First Previews across the whole house released 48 hrs before performance. Tickets for all other performances start at £10.

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